Reading Christ the Book in Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611): Iconography and the Cultures of Reading

Abstract

Aemilia Lanyer’s poem, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum , uses striking pre-Reformation iconography to present Christ as a book, a strategy that has not received prior critical attention. This article argues that this metaphor, together with the metaphoric presentation of her book as a sacred feast, lies at the center of the mode of affective devotional reading. It also aligns her own text with scripture and authorizes her poetics. In providing instructions for reading Christ the Book that are rich in the language of affective meditation, Lanyer draws on a tradition of pre-Reformation contemplative reading, which, the article argues, can be identified in early modern female devotional traditions. The article discusses the history of the use of the iconography of Christ as a book, from the twelfth century to Lancelot Andrewes, and explores it in relation to Bernadine and Lutheran spirituality. It argues that Lanyer engages a diverse nexus of confessional modalities in her treatment of this iconography and of religious sorrow, matching her own mixed religious heritage and the confessionally diverse group of her dedicatees. She uses a poetics of incarnation to overcome difference and to promote the synergistic force of reading the Passion.

Literal and Spiritual Births: Mary as Mother in Seventeenth-Century Women’s Writing

“…Lanyer's repeated use of feasting imagery has been a point of interest in scholarship of her work. Scholars have noted the connection between Lanyer's feast and the celebration of the Eucharist (Schoenfeldt;DiPasquale, 2008;Molekamp) and preaching (White), but not, as suggested here, with the medieval tradition of Marian nourishment. It is also worth noting that, elsewhere in the text, Lanyer's patrons are informed that this feast will deliver "health of the soule" (34), and the healing properties afforded to Salve Deus further align its author with Mary who, in medieval tradition, was regularly associated with spiritual healing.…”

“… 13 Although a number of scholars have referenced Lanyer’s use of biblical typology within larger considerations of her engagement with the Bible’s contents (White, 330; DiPasquale, 2000; Lewalski, 1979; Loughlin), there has not been a sustained interrogation of how the structures of this exegetical practice underpin the poem’s conception of literal and spiritual maternity, and facilitate the relationship constructed between the Old and New Testaments. Other scholars who have more broadly considered how the Bible shapes Lanyer’s poetic project include McBride and Ulreich; Phillippy; Longfellow, 59–91; Rienstra; Rogers; Molekamp, 2012. Leigh’s work has been considered in relation to its genre and female writing (Wayne; Poole; Heller), but discussion of how the Bible is read in The Mothers Blessing remains limited.…”

“…For an assessment of typology's importance to early modern exegesis and thought, see Luxon;Freinkel;Streete, 2009 and2012;Killeen, 2010 and. While typology remained the dominant way of reading the Bible in the early decades of the seventeenth century, it is worth mentioning that alternative approaches to biblical interpretation were emerging.…”

Marrying Christ: Bernard of Clairvaux and the Song of Songs in Aemilia Lanyer’s "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum"

“…Communal female spirituality is a central tenet of seventeenth-century poet Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. 2 Critical discussions of the work have often understood its construction of womanhood in terms of a shared experience of Christ and have tended to consider the poem's maternal Christology in relation to a devotional female gaze (see Mcgrath, 1997;Molekamp, 2012;Mueller, 1998). In these readings, Christ becomes the feminized object of women's contemplation as he nurtures them with his body and blood.…”